


I Couldn't Help It, It Had to be You

by richcreamerybutter



Series: ABBA-Esque [2]
Category: Ghost (Sweden Band)
Genre: Alcohol, All in the same universe, Angst, Awkward Sexual Situations, Drabbles, Drunk confessions, Drunkenness, Emotional Support, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Sharing a Bed, Sisters of sin - Freeform, Vomit, basically copia looks after drunk angry papa, drunk papa, oneshots, random stuff, soft copia, we'll just have to face it this time, where papa and copia are not brothers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:48:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28433439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/richcreamerybutter/pseuds/richcreamerybutter
Summary: Random bits and pieces, snapshots if you will, that belong to the universe of We'll Just Have to Face It This Time. Expect young Papa and Copia, awkward encounters with innocent Sisters, etc. I'll update the description/tags/rating/etc. as I add more stuff!
Relationships: Cardinal Copia/Papa Emeritus III
Series: ABBA-Esque [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2082639
Comments: 6
Kudos: 30





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A young Copia tries to escape to his usual bolthole only to find it occupied by a notorious boy from the year above.

Quarter to four, and school was not long finished. Dark, though. I had been politely but firmly moved on by Sister Winifred after I tried to linger for far too long in her classroom discussing women's roles in the church of Satan compared with those in other denominations, and I was trying to work out where I could hide for a little longer before I made my way back to the ministry. It was November, and that grey, damp sort of cold that carried neither drama nor festivity.

The halls were lit by candles, and the candles seemed to be the only things providing any sort of heat, too. I was never sure, when I was young, why the school halls never seemed to be warm the way the main buildings of the ministry were. When I matured and looked back I could see that it was probably a matter of negligence, disguised as a matter of budget, disguised as a matter of building character. Warmth and comfort would have distracted from our studies, perhaps. But at the time, it just felt miserable. School, in general, was miserable for people like me.

There was a reason I stayed until four when most of the other students were barrelling out of their study rooms at exactly half past three, heading back to our dormitories as they loosened their collars and pelted one another with fun snaps, if they were from lower school, and swearwords if they went to higher. I didn't belong to either faction, despite my age placing me very much in Sixth Year. I was just one of those students whom everybody knew wasn't worth involving in anything. At best, I was ignored.

If it weren't for my friendships with the Sisters who taught us, I probably would never have turned up. It wasn't as though I had parents they could complain to if I played truant.

It was a shame, really, that the library was on the main route between most of the classrooms and the entrance to school, because that meant its line of gothic arched windows looked out onto the courtyard, and if I were to sit in there with a good book, somebody would undoubtedly see me. And even if they didn't interrupt my reading in the moment, there would be consequences at some point down the line. Once, I'd had my own writing stolen from me, read aloud in front of the whole dining hall, then torn to pieces. I'd been proud of the poem I'd been working on at the time, but it was the last thing I ever wrote for pleasure.

No – I had learned the best places in school to keep myself out of the way, and one of them was the cleaners' cupboard near the main hall where we had morning prayers, dinner, and afternoon prayers if we were in upper school. I knew when the cleaners came, so I knew when I could use their space to avoid them. The real beauty of this musty, damp cubbyhole was the fact that it housed the boiler. Where the rest of the buildings remained chilled, this one small cube was the perfect place to warm the bones before making the slow journey back across to my dormitory. I was sure I was the only person who had realised that, most of the time at least, it was left unlocked. Perhaps in case the nursery staff needed access to sawdust …

I glanced up and down the corridor before reaching out to depress the handle: once I'd done that, I opened the door, slipped inside and closed it in one fluid movement, heaving a sigh as I always did at the knowledge that nobody had seen me. The warmth washed over me instantly, as did the moist, musty smell, but a couple of deep breaths sorted that problem out. It was worth putting up with. I closed my eyes and heaved a sigh.

Then:

'What the hell are you doing in here?'

The voice didn't belong to a cleaner. When I looked, I came face-to-face with a boy, leaning back against the boiler. One of the most notorious boys in the ministry, let alone in school: the youngest Emeritus brother, from the year above me, recognisable immediately from his mismatched eyes and near-permanent heart-throb frown. If he wasn't such a prominent member of our most unpleasant, arrogant clique he might even have been attractive, but his defined features only ever meant trouble for me. He wasn't like the standard issue bully. He was sly, quiet. Most probably more intelligent than many of the other boys, which was why he let them conduct his filthy business for him, and took a back seat himself. Kept his hands clean.

Rumour had it, though, that he'd once been caught sucking off one of the choir masters in the staff toilets. By his own father, no less. If that had happened to anyone else, I'm sure, they would have transferred to another school the very next day, but he wore the story like a badge of honour.

Except tonight, his cool visage didn't look as carefully curated as usual: that was genuine anguish writ large on his face.

I swallowed hard as I gazed at him in mild horror, taking a moment to invent an answer that wouldn't betray this cupboard as my safe haven. 'I … I was just hiding from Sister Assumpta. She was less than satisfied with my translation of Revelations. Apparently I added a good deal more detail about the Beast than was necessary.'

'Right.' He didn't believe me, but he said nothing more about it, instead sniffing a few times. 'Do you always talk like such a prick?'

I ignored this, of course. Perhaps if I didn't engage, that would be as bad as it got for me.

'What's your name?' he said, when I was silent for an awkwardly long time.

'Copia.'

'Oh, yeah …'

He sniffed again. I wasn't sure if I should perhaps take the opportunity to back out of the room and pretend this hadn't happened, but then again, I also wasn't sure if I should pretend to uphold my hiding charade. After a short internal struggle, I stepped further into the cupboard, perching my behind on the edge of the grimy Belfast sink.

'What are you doing in here, anyway?' I ventured. 'I wouldn't have thought a cleaning cupboard would be the usual haunt of an Emeritus …'

'Satan in _hell_ , why can't you just talk like a normal person?' he said.

I stood, silent.

'Sorry,' he said abruptly. 'I just … do you never wonder why people pick on you? It's because you're so weird, Copia.'

He didn't need to tell me that. I knew full well how “weird” I was – I was, of course, reminded every day, by someone or other. But being brought up by the clergy will do that to a person. Terzo Emeritus had grown up surrounded by people his own age, whereas I had learned everything I knew from people old enough to be my grandparents – my speech patterns included. And I was used to it.

Now that it was being pointed out to me, though, I had to wonder why I had allowed myself to get used to it in the first place.

'I don't think being _weird_ is reason enough to treat someone the way many people treat me,' I said quietly. 'I don't go around hurting people or anything like that.'

Terzo turned his head away from me at that: I could only assume he felt at least a small twinge of shame at being called out.

'All right,' he said. 'Maybe I'm hiding, too.'

I raised my eyebrows, instantly grateful that he couldn't see he'd piqued my interest. 'From …?'

'Who do you think?' When I didn't respond, genuinely because I had no idea whatsoever, he sighed. 'My father, of course. Who else?'

That was a surprise. Being the son of the most senior member of the clergy, to me, seemed like it would come with nothing but advantages – except perhaps the punishment at being caught mid-fellatio when dished out by one's father. I had always thought the Emerituses were a tight-knit unit who looked after one another the way fellow gang members do. Papa Nihil was a severe force in this ministry. To get on the wrong side of him was often synonymous with a swift belting from the order, no questions asked.

'Why? What has he done?' I said.

'What have _I_ done, you mean?' He sighed. 'I … _cazzo_. I don't know why I'm telling you this.'

'There's no one else here. And I won't tell anyone.'

'That's right, you won't.' He tried to growl it, I think, but when he rolled his head to the side so he was looking at me again, his face had softened. Now that I looked, his eyes were definitely red-rimmed. 'All right. I think he's looking for me. I failed one of my essays and he doesn't like his sons letting him down academically. He doesn't realise it's my brothers who are smart, not me.'

I had no idea how I was supposed to respond to that. I hadn't expected such honesty from someone who had never had much more than snide comments and sneers for me in the past.

'I never thought you weren't smart,' I said.

He blinked up at me, shifting slightly against the warmth of the boiler. 'What?'

'I just … I never thought you were particularly stupid. You're not like the other …'

 _Bullies_? Was I really about to say that? I mentally shook my head, trying to think of the right word for both what I wanted to say and what I wanted him to hear. He was waiting, though, and the pressure was too much.

'You stand out from the others, is what I mean to say,' I said. 'You possess a quiet sort of … dignity? Intelligence, perhaps, that the other thugs in your year do not. I can tell from the way you carry yourself, and the fact that the others you hang around with do the childish name-calling, not you.' I cleared my throat. Why the hell was I smarming up to someone like him? Any more of this and he was going to punch me for coming onto him or something. 'What was the weighting?' I said quickly.

He just stared at me.

'The … the essay. What was the weighting?'

'Of … the essay …?'

OK – perhaps he wasn't quite as switched on as I was trying to persuade him he was. It was real effort, keeping my voice level. 'How much of your final grade was the essay worth? Twenty per cent? Fifty?'

His eyes widened with comprehension: then he gave a sharp bark of a laugh. 'Per cent? No – this wasn't even a _real_ essay. Just an end-of-module sort of thing. I can rewrite it a thousand times, if I need to, and it won't even matter. Not to me, at least. But to him …'

He dipped his chin to wipe his eyes with the back of his hand, and I found myself very interested in the limescale on the hot tap beside me.

'Your father is a _coglione_ ,' I said.

It was not the done thing, at all, to talk about our elders and superiors this way. To do it to someone in the bloodline, then, of the most superior superior was punishable by …

I didn't even know. I wasn't sure why I'd taken the risk. He wasn't a friend, or even an acquaintance, but something within me deeply despised seeing someone so downtrodden by their own kin.

He stared up at me with shining eyes, and I tried to find an ounce of regret for my outburst, but there wasn't one within me.

'Well – he _is_ ,' I said, confidence surging with each word. 'He keeps the school chilled in the depths of winter, he practises sax in the middle of the night, he makes promises of fidelity he can't keep to Sisters … why does his opinion on what you do count for anything? Rewrite the damn essay. Mistakes are there to be learned from. That's why we don't write our first-ever essays in our Esame di Stato.'

Terzo's lips were twitching as though trying to resist a smile. I offered him one of my own, my heart pounding in my throat, to see if it encouraged him. There was some stirring at each corner. That was, perhaps, the best I was going to get.

'Why are you being nice?' he said.

I shrugged. 'I suppose it isn't in my nature to be nasty.'

'Hmm. All right.' He arched his back and stretched his arms out in front of him as though he'd just woken up, slow and deliberate: he linked his fingers together and pushed forward until both of his elbows cracked. 'I'd better go, anyway. I … don't tell anyone about this, will you?'

I'd fully expected him to finish with something like that, but it was a little disappointing nevertheless. I shook my head, but I didn't drop the smile, and finally he matched it with one of his own.

'Good. See you around.'

'Yes … see you around.'

*  
  


I did, too.

Him being in the year above me meant we didn't share classes, and we often moved around different parts of the ministry. But several days later, when I was late out of the main hall prior to afternoon classes after I'd had to wait for a rigatoni restock at lunch, I passed him with a little gaggle of his friends as they loitered outside their own study room. You could always tell he was the ringleader by the subtle way the others pointed towards him, like furniture facing a television screen. As usual, I was laden with books, and in my anxiety around being late I was rushing. No doubt my face was flushed, my uniform askew, and one of the boys made some snide comment or other under his breath. Thankfully, I didn't hear the nature of it due to my heartbeat pounding in my ears as I ran.

What I did hear, though, was Terzo.

'Leave off. What has he ever done to you?'

I was already past them when my mind registered what he'd said. But I smiled down at the books clutched in my arms.


	2. Sister Mary Cynthia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cardinal Copia can't sleep. He takes himself out for a walk around the quietened ministry, but he runs into a Sister of Sin who has the same problem.
> 
> Neither of them can stop thinking about one dearly departed Emeritus brother.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 'I did try,' I say eventually. 'Once. Right after you … disappeared. One of the younger sisters noticed I'd been down, and we got to chatting … one thing led to another and all that shit, but it soon became very apparent, to both of us, that I simply … wished she was you,' I say. The memory is painful to even gloss over. 'It was a humiliating experience, for her and me. But then I should have known it would be, shouldn't I? I can't have sex the way you do. I only want it when there are … feelings involved.' - We'll Just Have to Face It This Time (That's Me).
> 
> It's very very dialogue heavy, but I guess that's the nature of this scene. Enjoy!

It was much easier, for a while, to simply avoid people.

It did not mark a huge difference in my habits anyway. I had always been quiet, reserved and hardworking, and known as such. I had just never gone out of my way to hide _quite_ so much as I did then – but then I was not a big enough presence in the clergy to leave much of a hole with my absence anyway.

Or so I thought.

She found me, as Sisters often do, wandering the monastery. They do not often find me there at eleven o' clock at night, though. At that time, the place is usually deserted, and even I only frequented it when sleep evaded me. It also offered some stunningly romantic spots for a late night tryst – all moonlit stone, gothic windows, the works – but I was lucky enough to never have stumbled upon anything untoward. Thank Satan. I had no idea how I would have reacted if I did find somebody entwined with somebody else. It was simply the way of things here, but it had never been _my_ way of things, per se.

I was alone. Of course. And so was she, dressed in a deep blue dressing gown smattered with white stars. It was not so different in style from her habit, in a sense. Sometimes if I glimpse a Sister in casual clothes – that is to say, “evening wear”, in the most tenuous sense – I find it hard to recognise them. This, though, was most definitely Sister Mary Cynthia. Short, slight, with the kindest pair of deep brown eyes I have ever seen. Even as they met mine they filled me with warmth.

'Cardinal Copia,' she said. 'What a surprise. I suspected I would be alone out here tonight.'

'As did I, Sister,' I admitted. 'Though it is wonderful to see you, of course.'

She turned a faint shade of pink at those words alone, and I realised why I had such a soft spot for her: she reminded me of me.

'And you,' she said. 'We've missed you around the ministry of late.'

I raised my eyebrows. To have had my absence noticed … and by multiple people, apparently? Well. That meant that I had had the opposite effect from what I had intended.

With her gazing up at me with those huge eyes, though, I found I didn't particularly mind.

'Really?' Was all I managed to articulate, though.

'Yes …' She looked a little flustered at being questioned. 'You have such a strong, calming presence around here. Things have felt … fraught. Without you.'

'Ah. Yes. Well …' I wrung my hands together. 'Things have felt fraught around here either way, Sister. I am sure you can appreciate that.'

We were standing by a window that overlooked a stretch of the grounds, all in darkness save for the large moon hanging low enough in the sky to turn the lawns and the trim hedges silver. Sister Mary turned to the window, lowering her head. Her already pale skin glowed, almost translucent.

'I wish we were allowed to talk about them,' she said quietly. 'Sister Julienne mentioned the Second in prayers the other morning – just in _passing –_ and Sister Imperator has had her on ghoul laundry duties ever since. I don't know what you feed Fire, Cardinal, but the resulting messes apparently smell like nothing she has ever known on this Earth.'

'Oh, we do not tend to feed Fire,' I said. 'He simply hunts for himself most of the time. We once had to get him X-rayed for something entirely unrelated and they found an intact Furby in his stomach. He must have swallowed it whole …'

Sister Mary chuckled, but the falseness echoed harshly off the stone walls around us.

'It just … it makes it more tricky to process what happened to all of them,' she said. 'When most of our superiors want to pretend they never existed.'

At this, I shuffled on the spot. While I did not pretend my predecessors never existed, I realised then that, perhaps, by staying removed from the clergy I had also removed an important opportunity for others to share their concerns. And their memories.

'I know what you mean,' I said slowly.

It was, indeed, the first time I had acknowledged this aloud.

Sister Mary gazed up at me from beneath damp eyelashes.

'I don't want to trouble you on such a peaceful night, Cardinal,' she said quietly. 'But I … truly do miss him.'

_Him._

She did not have to elaborate. My heart still fluttered, my throat still tightened.

'I mean,' she paused to wipe her eyes. 'I know I'm being silly, of course. You worked with him for years, and I have only been at the ministry for a matter of months.'

'You are being far from silly, Sister,' I assured her. 'There is, very often, neither rhyme nor reason to human emotion. Who are we to govern what is or isn't silly?'

I was, in truth, both saddened and touched to hear that this loss was being felt so keenly somewhere that wasn't inside my own heart. She smiled tentatively at me, pulling her blue gown around herself against the chill in the air.

'Thank you for saying that. Sometimes I think I am being ridiculous, but then I wonder how many other siblings feel the same and are just too afraid to express it?'

'Many,' I said, without hesitation. 'He was that sort of a leader. I know there were many people in this ministry who were very emotionally attached to him. I also know that he was very emotionally attached to his clergy, too.'

At this, Sister Mary half-smiled to herself – avoiding looking at me entirely.

'I did spend one evening with him,' she said.

I knew what she was really trying to say. I took a moment to suppress my instinctive reaction: I wanted to quiz her on every tiny detail. For a change, I had the chance to hear about one of his conquests from the other side, and it took everything I had not to leap on that chance.

'Yes …' She was sighing, and I refocused my attention on her. 'I couldn't believe it. I had never been brave enough to approach anybody, but … he made it so that I didn't have to.'

'Oh, yes. He was smooth,' I said, and she giggled.

'Very. I didn't intend to do anything that night other than walk, but he found me. I was very new still, you see. Very homesick. I couldn't sleep, so I'd taken myself out to explore the ministry by night and remind myself why I had chosen the sisterhood over my old life. And he was out, too. By himself, in the middle of the night, in full skull paint. I thought he might have been meeting someone, but he insisted he was merely partaking in some quiet reflection himself.'

Flamboyant and irritating though he was, he was indeed capable of serious thought. Now and again, at least. I could picture him vividly, white paint stark in the moonlight.

'I was so scared of bothering him that I made to turn and walk the other way, but …' She shrugged, with a tiny smile. 'He called me back. By my full name. I couldn't believe he knew my name, especially being so new still. So we got to talking, and he showed me around the grounds. And it surprised me, just how easy he was to be with. Do you know what I mean? When you looked at him, he seemed untouchable, but when you _spoke_ to him …'

'He made you feel like you really mattered.'

She nodded. 'He was excellent in conversation, but he knew when to keep quiet, too. He knew when a silence was comfortable.'

As if to prove that she, too, knew when two people could spend a few moments in silence without discomfort, she paused. Her gaze travelled back out of the window. The moon had risen since I last gave it my attention, now casting broader white light from much higher in the sky, and I let out just the smallest of sighs. Sister Mary Cynthia's eyes flicked back to mine.

'We had a silent moment right here,' she whispered. 'We were just standing, like we are, looking up at the moon, and then … I don't know. It just felt _right_. We - we kissed.'

When Sister Mary had told me that she had spent an evening with him, I had pictured her as a visitor to his room one night, like so many of the other Sisters. Not … this. Not a kiss under a sweeping, starlit sky. The thought made my chest ache. I gazed at her with my lips slightly parted, dumbstruck at the beauty of the mere idea, and she giggled.

'We didn't do … _that_ ,' she said, and her cheeks were flushed again. So like me. I could feel heat in my own, too – I simply could not shake that beautiful image from my mind and it must have shown on my face. 'In fact, I never did that with him. He just … pleasured me here. Himself. And he wouldn't allow me to return the favour. He said he had not set out to take from anyone that night, and that since he'd met me he'd merely wanted to bewitch me in the moonlight.'

So unlike Papa's usual stories. Perhaps he omitted these from his repertoire for fear that they were too personal, too important to the other parties involved. Whenever he had come to me with a story it had always, or at least most of the time, been one of orgies, or substance misuse, or _I bet you'll never guess which ghoul asked me to piss on him last night_?

Not this. Not selfless acts under the stars.

If I had known he was capable of tenderness in this capacity I would, perhaps, have taken him up on one of his many offers …

'Oh, he will have pleasured himself to the memory later, Sister Mary. Trust me,' I said. It was an attempt to lower the tone, to stop that longing from making my heart ache more than it already was, and she bit her lip with a nervous smile.

'I never did return the favour,' she said. 'He told me to find him if ever I needed, or indeed _wanted_ , to speak to him, but … I didn't get the chance. He was on tour, then he was gone. So …' She gave a hopeless shrug. 'I'm sorry. I didn't mean to spoil your night with my misery.'

'No,' I said. 'You've spoiled nothing, Sister. I – I think about him often myself.'

That didn't have to mean anything as deep as what it meant. She did not need to read into it that I had been keeping a low profile for fear that someone would ask me how I was and I would respond with tears. She couldn't possibly see that my every waking moment was spent filled with regret that I never had the courage to make him what he ought to have been to me.

Or could she? She was watching me very closely.

'And –' I cleared my throat. 'And while I am clearly not my predecessor, I wish to – erm – extend his offer of someone to speak to, should you want or … or need it. I will certainly not pretend that he never existed.'

I was trying to deflect from her suspicions, but it did not seem to have worked.

'Cardinal, forgive me,' she said. 'But I have never spoken to anyone who has spent the night in your quarters the way most other members of the clergy take people in …'

'Well,' I cleared my throat. 'Perhaps the sort of people who spend the night with me are simply not ones to kiss and tell.'

'But siblings generally like to do other things and tell,' she said quietly.

I let this hang between us. Denial felt like a pointless exercise now – she knew. I had suspected this for a long time. It fit in with the general impression of me, after all. Quiet, studious Cardinal Copia. No time to indulge in the sins of the flesh. No inclination _,_ in fact. He had all the sexuality of a used teabag. A used _green_ teabag …

'I –' I had to pause to swallow, trying to summon enough saliva to my mouth to talk without it all sort of sticking itself together. 'It is – it never has been – too high on my priorities list, Sister. I do much better serving the Dark Lord in other ways.'

She straightened up, loosening her arms, then took hold of my hand. I flinched in genuine surprise: it was smaller than my own, and I could feel its chill even through my leather glove.

'I really appreciate you talking to me tonight, Cardinal,' Sister Mary said. 'And I want you to know that the offer you made me works both ways. I know I'm just a Sister, but if you ever need to talk about anything … about _him_ …'

 _Him._ Again. Why couldn't we name him? Why couldn't we even use his title? What was so taboo, so difficult, about identifying the man who was weighing so heavily on both of our minds? What did we think was going to happen if we said his name?

The name of the man who, right here in this very spot, had had his hands on the Sister who still had _her_ hand in my own …

I think we both leant in at once, which was a relief. I couldn't blame myself and I couldn't claim to have felt intimidated by her. I do remember my surprise at the warmth of her lips. I had quite forgotten how it felt to be kissed.

She was the first to pull me closer, and the soft dressing gown enveloped me as she wrapped both arms around me. Stars, like those in the sky above us, folding me in. He'd had a flair for romance. How could I have never considered that? Why did everything he did seem so sordid when he gave me the debrief, when in reality, we could have had this?

There was no rush. Sister Mary's kisses were gentle, her lips soft. For perhaps the first time in my life, I was able to remove my mind from the immediate worries of the moment just enough to lose myself in it. So this was how it felt. To indulge in something carnal with another member of the clergy, a Sister I barely knew, however vanilla the act. And I had to confess, even if just to myself, that it was nowhere near as terrifying as I had always imagined.

She smiled up at me again when I pulled away, as gently as I could.

'Sister Mary,' I said, keeping my voice low. 'I would be happy for you to be one of the very few Sisters to have … spent an evening with me, shall we say? As long as you would be happy not to kiss and tell. Or – or not to do anything else and tell. Do you understand?'

She nodded. 'It isn't your style, Cardinal. Don't worry. I understand.'

She found the back of my neck with her hand, twirling her fingers into my hair. Almost more than the kissing, this felt incredibly intimate: the tip of her nose brushed mine, she closed her eyes, and I felt the warmth of her breath on my face before she closed the gap between us again, tilting her face to the left as she found my lips with her own.

Whatever had been present in me for that kiss in the dressing room was not present now. Instead, that hot desperation had been replaced with a quiet sort of contentment. It smouldered rather than burned. There was less intensity, of course, but with that came safety. Less risk. To know we were kissing for comfort made kissing someone who was not him much, much easier.

That was not to say that he wasn't on my mind.

'Sister …' I inched away from her, but I kept my arms around her, and my lips close to her jaw so I could trail kisses along it between words. 'Tell me … when you were here with him … what did he do to you?'

She heaved a long sigh, tipping her head back and tilting her hips forward, into mine. 'He … he sat me on the window sill …'

It followed that I did the same. She was slight enough that it was easy, lifting her up and placing her gently on the stone. I shifted so that the toes of my shoes were pushed right up against the wall, and she wrapped both legs around my waist. Her dressing gown slipped, the folds opening around me, and there was no denying how closely entwined our bodies were then. She might be expecting stirring from me soon, and I wasn't sure I would be able to muster anything up. I was not in that sort of mood. Perhaps I could convince her that I, too, was only here to pleasure her, that I was not interested in having her return the favour.

'How is this, Sister?' I said, and she nodded.

'Perfect. Beautiful.'

And I was about to ask her what had happened next, where things had moved to once she was snugly seated in the window under the stars, but she was raising her hips so that still more of her robe fell to the sides and her groin was pushing into mine. I had been expecting pyjama bottoms, but my trousers met with soft, satiny underwear and the smooth skin of her inside thighs. Ripe for the touching, if I – and she – so wished.

I had to swallow hard before she kissed me again.

'And then …?' I said, against her lips.

She sighed. 'He used his fingers, Cardinal.'

Oh, _cazzo_.

The image was too perfect, in my mind. Those hands, those deft, practised hands, clad in their trademark white gloves, as they explored the pale flesh of Sister Mary's legs before venturing further up …

It was that image that emboldened me. My own hand may have been clad in smooth leather instead of those soft gloves, but it moved with ease even so, twitching her underwear aside to find her folds slick already. She sighed.

'Cardinal … _s_ _ì…_ '

I knew enough about sex from reading, at least, to know where that sweet spot lay. I slipped two fingertips between her folds, stroking upwards until I found it, and she shivered against me with a tiny moan that sent an involuntary shudder though me, too.

And an involuntary whisper.

'Oh, Papa …'

I didn't realise what I had said until I felt Sister Mary still against me. My fingertips paused in their circling motion, and slowly, I opened my eyes to find her staring up at me in surprise.

'Papa …?' she said.

I gulped, but there was a new lump in my throat that would not shift downwards, no matter how hard I tried to force it. Could I deny what I had said? Could I play it off as something else, some nickname or other?

No. Of course not. She had heard perfectly well – so well, in fact, that she had repeated the word back to me. Neither of us could pretend this hadn't happened. Least of all me. There were tears swimming in my eyes and I turned my entire body away from her, stepping backwards so that her legs fell back against the wall.

'Cardinal …'

I covered my mouth with my hand in a vain attempt to stifle a sob. 'I am so sorry …'

She was adjusting her dressing gown, pushing her legs together again and tightening the belt around her waist. 'No … no, it's OK …'

But it very obviously wasn't. I tried to brush tears from my eyes but they were coming too fast, and I couldn't look at her any more. I turned to face the opposite wall, in fact. I wanted to pretend she wasn't there at all, and the closest I could get to that reality was to make sure I couldn't see her, like a child who has not yet learned object permanence.

It was a pity she did not share that desire. Seconds later, a small arm had wound itself around my shoulders, and a hand was stroking my upper arm.

'I understand,' said Sister Mary quietly. 'I really do.'

But that was the problem. I didn't _want_ her to understand. I had wanted to keep this shame entirely to myself. That was why I had been lying low, avoiding siblings and ghouls and Imperator and Nihil. I had wanted to avoid this very situation, where I broke down in front of some unsuspecting victim over the memory of a man I had felt far more for than I ever should have felt.

If I was going to have this breakdown in front of anyone, though, I supposed Sister Mary Cynthia was the best person to have it in front of. She kept her hold on me, and she leant against me, and her small form was some comfort as I sobbed at the pain and humiliation of it all.

And at the memory of him. Most of all, at the memory of him.

She walked me to my room. I tried to insist that I walked her to hers, but she reminded me that she was not the one crying, and I couldn't deny that. She kept her arm around me the whole time and I had to thank Satan that we did not see anybody else.

'He was something else,' Sister Mary said, when we reached my front door. 'And … it's no wonder you felt something for him. He had me bewitched and I met him _once_. You knew him for … well. I don't know how long you knew him for.'

I was in no mental state to work out the years. I just smiled at her.

'And I still have no intention of kissing and telling,' she said. 'I also want to reiterate that … well, if you ever do want to talk …'

I nodded. 'Thank you, Sister. Really. And I … I cannot apologise enough.'

She gave my hand a squeeze.

'I'm not just saying it to be polite, Cardinal. I think you … I think you really ought to take my offer up. If no one else is going to talk about him, maybe we can be the ones to buck that trend.'

I bit my lip. Avoiding the subject had worked much better for me than even touching on it had, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another Call the Midwife nun name, of course.


	3. Hey Jealousy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tell me, d'you think it'd be all right  
> if I could just crash here tonight?  
> You can see I'm in no shape for driving and anyway I've got no place to go
> 
> Papa's angry - and drunk. Very drunk. Warning for the alcohol consumption and the resulting emotional and physical effects.

Papa didn't often scream, as such.

But when he did, the noise was unmistakable. It sort of caught in his throat on the way out. The raspiness and the volume were a harrowing combination that nobody within a radius of around half a kilometre could possible ignore.

'You didn't _have_ to say it, you were implying it heavily enough!'

I had almost been asleep. It was later than I would have liked it to be, but I'd been distracted by Nihil's admin – there seemed to be a lot more of it when Ghost were on tour – and I'd been too preoccupied with that to notice the time.

Then no sooner had I started to drift off …

'Maybe you're just reading too much into what I'm saying because you feel so fucking guilty about it?'

Alpha. I wondered whether I should get up, or simply pull a pillow up over my head. They had played so locally that night that they had come home to sleep, but I suspected they had been out for drinks first. They sounded fiery enough.

'Stop trying to twist things! You always do this, Alpha! He was my _friend_ , you know. If I could –'

I just about heard Alpha's resulting sneer cutting Papa off. 'Your _friend_? That's not what I've heard.'

The noise Papa made then was less a scream, more a roar. I could hear scrabbling as other people perhaps joined the fray. Were they fighting? It wouldn't have been completely beyond the realm of possibility. With a sigh, resigned to the certainty that I would not be going to sleep any time soon, I sat up in bed to slide out onto the cold floor. I thought the world of that man, but as I reached for my dressing gown there was a part of me cursing his name and wondering why the Hell he'd chosen the corridor _my_ room was on to have a tantrum.

I wrapped my dressing gown around myself and made my way to the door as the voices grew louder – two of them, anyway. It was hard to tell now, but I was sure there were others in the distance still, and they were fading.

'Just leave it …' The soothing tones of Phil. I wondered whether he had been on the scene the whole time. He did travel with the band, more often than not. 'Come on … it isn't worth it …'

'Didn't you hear what he was saying?' Papa cried.

I opened the door. Phil had one arm right around Papa so that his own were pinned to his sides. He was thrashing around even so, though, but I knew how secure a ghoul's grip could be. Besides, when I made myself known, the two of them froze, rabbits in headlights.

'Ah. Just the man I was hoping to speak to.' Phil looked as exhausted as I felt but his grip on the wriggling Papa didn't waver. 'I'm sorry for doing this at such an unsatanly hour but would you mind helping me get this one to bed?'

 _This one_ hissed like a cornered cat, revealing his little pointed fangs. 'I don't need help –'

'I don't trust you not to chase Alpha down again if I release you,' Phil said.

'Yes, where is Alpha, anyway?' I said, and Phil shrugged as best he could.

'Wandered off bored, I think. He wasn't in the mood for a fight.'

This made sense. Compared to the rest of us, Papa wasn't brilliant at holding his liquor. Where other people could enjoy a few slow glasses of wine over an evening, the same wine might have him disappearing to the bathroom every two minutes and speaking at several volume notches louder than anyone else in the room. He was a feisty enough character at the best of times, but get a couple of shots down his neck and whatever mood he was in was exacerbated a thousandfold. He could be a lot of fun if he'd started drinking happy; difficult to prise off you if he was feeling affectionate.

Tonight, though …

Phil and I shared an exasperated eye-roll.

'Just dump him here,' I sighed. 'It seems like someone ought to keep an eye on him, at any rate.'

'I told you, I don't need _help_ ,' Papa spat, but Phil redoubled his grip on him.

'Are you sure?' he said to me, in an undertone: Papa continued to chunter away under his breath. 'He's – um. He's pretty insufferable right now.'

Papa, fortunately, gave us no indication that he'd heard this.

'I'm sure,' I said. 'You have promo to do still, and I am accustomed to his … insufferability.'

I had ever seen him this drunk, though. Nor angry.

Together, Phil and I wrestled him into my room, and Phil slammed the door behind us – just in case Papa bolted after Alpha, perhaps, but he did seem past that stage now. He was peering around my room as though searching for something he recognised from his own, and coming up short.

'You're staying with me tonight, Papa,' I said loudly. 'There's no need to go all the way back to your room. We can sort things out with Alpha in the morning.'

'Fucking … Alpha …'

By this point, I was as curious as to what Alpha could have said to infuriate him this much as I was keen to get him safely to sleep in the hope that he would shut up long enough to allow me to rest. I knew only one of these courses of action was going to end well, though.

'Go and get some sleep,' I said to Phil, in an undertone. 'He'll be OK. Don't worry.'

Phil looked as though he were struggling with himself for a moment. When he realised that there was probably not much more he could do to help, though, he softened.

'All right,' he said. 'He's in good hands.'

'Indeed. Hands he won't … try it on with, all being well,' I said. I had heard the stories, normally from Papa as he nursed a headache and sipped Lucozade. Stories of how he had embarrassed himself in the beds of ghouls as I tried to work on some innocuous admin task. I knew how patient Phil was capable of being with him.

Phil smiled at me, his kind green eyes crinkling.

'Well. You know why he never tries it on with you, don't you?' he said.

I must have flinched: I glanced at Papa, but he'd wandered off to perch at the foot of my bed, still grumbling. Had he confided in Phil? They were close, after all.

Or was it just that obvious from the outside?

Phil caught hold of my wrist.

'Best of luck,' he said. 'I'll catch you later. I must owe you – uh.' He cleared his throat. 'A favour? After this.'

A surge of heat rushed to my cheeks, and I glanced down at his hand. 'It is no matter,' I said, and Phil gave me one last smile before backing out of the room – keeping both eyes on Papa as he did.

I put my hands on my hips and glanced at the clock beside my bed. Ten past three in the morning. _Santa merda_.

'All righty then,' I said. 'Are you going to tell me what's got you into such a state? I'd like to get back to sleep before dawn, if that's possible.'

He was clutching at my eiderdown with both fists, staring up at me from below his eyelids rather than tilting his head upwards. 'I'm fucking sick of Alpha,' he snarled.

I rolled my own eyes. I'd gathered _that_ much. 'Then is he worth – this?' I said. 'As far as I am aware you two are able to be civil on the road. Don't get yourself into trouble over him after one stupid night of too much drink …'

'It has _nothing_ to do with drink and _everything_ to do with him being a twat –'

'Oi.' He was raising his voice again, and I was beginning to grow concerned for my neighbours on the corridor who may have just settled back down in bed after the short spell of peace. 'He is not here. It is only me. There is _no_ need.'

'But he is a twat,' Papa whined. 'Getting all high and mighty about Omega when he knows how raw it still is for me … I would do anything to have him back, Copia, you know I would …'

'I know.' We had been through this. Many times. 'But beating Alpha up will not change anything. Let's just get some water down you and get you to bed, huh?'

There was no way in hell that Papa, scrappy though he was, could have beaten Alpha up anyway.

'Ugh.' Papa sort of threw himself even further down into my mattress, if that were possible. 'We played such a fucking good show, too. Why the fuck did he have to ruin it –?

His shoulders jerked suddenly, and he cut himself off. _Cazzo_.

'Are you going to hurl, Papa?' I said.

Papa shook his head, but he had his lips clamped together.

'Go to the bathroom,' I said. 'Now.'

He was a _bit_ late, but by some miracle the only spillage was down himself. I tried not to make a big deal out of checking my soft furnishings, trying to look as though my only concern was for Papa's wellbeing, but I must admit it was a relief.

But as I sat on the bathroom floor with him, holding his hair (although even that was damage control), rubbing his back and muttering reassurances, I am not sure I would have been too bothered if he had gone to town all over my eiderdown.

I think throwing up, while not quite sobering him up, made him realise exactly what a state he was in. Drained of fight by his ordeal, he slumped back onto the floor with a groan. Without his attitude he looked rather pathetic, hair lank and stringy, stage clothes stained, face paint smudged. I could not put him to bed like that. But I wasn't sure I could trust him to shower without doing himself an injury, or worse.

After such passion, his quietness was unsettling.

'OK?' I said, forcing a smile, and he nodded without returning it. 'Look, why don't we, erm – I mean, I could get you some clean clothes to sleep in? You need to wash your hair, at the very least. I'm sorry I could not _entirely_ save it from … you know.'

'For which I will never forgive you,' Papa grumbled.

'Oh, be quiet. My sympathy is wearing thin as it is,' I said, giving him a playful nudge. 'What I mean to say is that you could do with a shower.'

It became apparent, after ten seconds or so, that Papa was still too far gone to be able to undress himself. His gloved hands couldn't make sense of the buttons on his shirt, nor of the concept that the shirt had to come off _after_ his jacket. It was with reluctance that I stepped in to help. I avoided the little sick splashes as I lifted his jacket off his shoulders and dropped it into my laundry hamper, then unfastened his shirt buttons for him, leaving him to pull the whole thing off himself. That, at least, he could manage.

With the newfound confidence that successfully shrugging off his shirt brought him, he fumbled for his belt, but when he got the top button undone on his trousers and I caught a glimpse of wiry curls, I turned away with a hand at my eyes. The _stronzetto_ wasn't wearing underwear.

'Let me … I'll sort the shower out,' I said.

He didn't seem interested in my new anxiety, merely continuing to tug at the zip as I dashed to my shower and turned it on. I waited for the temperature to reach a comfortable warmth, holding a determined hand under the water. If I concentrated on that, I couldn't think too hard about what Papa was doing behind me. His shuffling and grunts were, nevertheless, distracting.

I had to keep my back to him as he got into the shower, too, still unsteady on his feet. I wished I felt safe leaving him. This was too much. Papa had made it clear in the past that he did not mind me seeing him naked. I _had_ seen him naked, and he me. But never in a situation like this, where one of us held all of the control because the other one was incapable of rational thought …

I sat on the floor on the other side of the room. Faced the wall. Crossed my ankles and sighed.

'I'm just here, OK?' I called back to him.

He didn't say anything. And there was a strange sort of melancholy, on many levels, at the thought that in any other situation Papa might have been chomping at the bit to drag me under the water with him, too.

It wasn't until he turned the shower off that he said anything at all.

'Copia, will you … can I have a towel?' His voice echoed off the walls, still loud with lack of self-awareness.

In all my panic on seeing his pubes, I had forgotten this eventuality. I nipped into the airing cupboard to find the warmest towel I could, then unfurled it, holding it between Papa and I so that when he shuffled the shower door open I could only see his head and shoulders. I approached him tentatively, but where I'd expected him to reach out to take the towel from me, he lifted his arms into the air like a child.

I knew what he expected me to do, but somehow, this needy gesture knocked me for six. Our eyes met over the top of the towel, his still smeared with traces of black paint, and he sighed.

'Copia?' he said.

'Hmm?' After so long not talking, I was ready to just tuck him into bed and make myself comfortable on the floor. This sounded like it might be intense.

'I screw up everything I touch, don't I?'

There was such defeated misery to his voice that it was almost impossible to believe that this was the man who'd been struggling against Phil's powerful bicep earlier. Then, to my horror, I watched his face crumple. As he started to sob, I bundled him up in the towel, wrapping both arms around him to tuck it into place but not removing them once I had. His damp arms found me, and I held him to me.

'No,' I said, stroking his back through the towel. 'No, you don't.'

He still wasn't steady enough on his feet for prolonged standing. I semi-supported him back into my bedroom, where we sat together on my bed, our arms still around each other as he hiccuped. He was slumped against me now, close to passing out. I didn't dare suggest moving him. He was warm inside the towel, and his body felt heavy on mine.

'It is a good thing you turned me down, I think,' he said.

He was sniffing, eyes still brimming as he peered up at me. And as much as it irritated me that Papa had drank and yelled himself into such a mess, I could not deny the little bubble of affection that was beginning to inflate inside me at his words.

'I could never, ever deserve you,' he said.

I didn't have any response to that. If I had, he was too drunk to appreciate any sort of sentiment anyway. So I simply kissed his forehead before pulling him into me again.

When his breathing slowed, and I was bearing almost his entire weight, I let him go. Steadily. I moved him back onto the bed, making sure the towel remained right around him, and I realised the silver lining of his drunkenness was the whole and complete way he had now passed out. It would have been a struggle to get him under all of my blankets, but he was past the point of caring about whether or not he was tucked in neatly.

I made sure he was lying on his side. I also placed my waste paper bin on one side of the bed, and my bathroom bin on the other. Just in case. Then I arranged a sort of nest for myself using cushions and a fluffy throw for my loveseat, confident now that I was so tired I could fall asleep on a recently extinguished bonfire.

It was just a shame Papa's sad little _I could never, ever deserve you_ was playing on a loop in my mind.

When his fumbling woke me up, some minutes later, I wasn't even sure I had been asleep at first.

Concerned that this meant he was on the verge of throwing up again, I sat up with urgency. It was too dark to make much out, but I could see a wriggling shadow, and it looked like it was padding around the bed, searching for something.

'Copia?' Papa mumbled. 'Where did you go?'

'I'm here,' I said. 'I'm just on the floor. Are you OK?'

'Mmmmm.' He made a few sleepy noises that I struggled to comprehend. 'Come back. Please.'

I cleared my throat. 'You're … you're not wearing anything.'

'I have a towel on.'

'A towel isn't really …' I sighed. I was too tired, and he was too needy, for me to resist him. 'Let me get you something proper to put on.'

Once he was decent in a pair of my lounge pants (adorably loose on him), I hoisted myself up into the bed. He'd managed to get himself under my duvet, too. I wriggled myself back against him, and he slid both arms around my midriff. He felt half-asleep again already: perhaps he thought I was a creature of his dreams.

'There, _tesoro_ ,' he said. 'There.'

This time, I was asleep inside a minute.

*

After confirming which of my clothes I didn't mind him borrowing, he dressed in silence the next morning. His embarrassment was tangible. He even locked himself in the bathroom - perhaps the most precious version of himself he had ever been in front of me. In front of _anyone,_ by all accounts. I stayed in bed as he got ready. I was going to need some real time to decompress when he was gone. I could move then.

I'd chosen the most inconspicuous of my clothes in the hope that no one would realise he wasn't wearing his own, but the dark suit he had donned still hung loose on him. He emerged from the bathroom with a silly twirl and a lopsided smile. 'Dapper, Copia, huh? I'll have it laundered and returned to you tomorrow.'

'I am in no hurry. I have no upcoming occasions at which I would be expected to wear a suit, anyway.'

'Still. It is the principle of the thing.'

He exhaled hard through his nose.

'Was I truly awful last night?'

I nodded. I couldn't lie to him, after all. He slammed his palm into his face, shaking his head.

'Fuck. I am … _so_ sorry …'

I almost laughed. To disguise the way my face must have been contorting, I shuffled myself upright in bed until I was sure I could speak without my voice shaking – I even tried to fix him with a gaze of teacher-level disappointment. 'Thank you for apologising,' I said. 'But there is no need. Just go and hydrate and _rest._ You still have fans to impress.'

'Not at the expense of disappointing my best friend,' he said. He made to bound over to me, I think, except his headache got in the way and he sort of stumbled, clutching his forehead. I couldn't work out whether he was pantomiming or in genuine agony, but it didn't matter. Either way, he reached me, and met my irresistible smile with one of his own.

'Thank you for not leaving me to flounder in my own fluids,' he said. 'We're going out for the _biggest_ fucking brunch you have ever seen when the tour is over. I promise.'

His breath was still a little sour when we embraced, but it was ... bearable. An indicator that he hadn't stolen my toothbrush to try and get rid of his sick breath, which I had to admit was admirable.

He didn't remember much, I found out later. And I was far more upset about that than I had any right to be.

And, of course, we never made the brunch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just smushed this together quite quickly because I'm in a writing funk and I've had this in my head for months. I'll probably look back on this and want to re-write it before long but right now I just feel like I need to upload something.
> 
> Maybe one day I'll decide on an in-universe reason the old ghouls left, for writing purposes, but today is not that day.

**Author's Note:**

> "And I confess, I wanted to reach out to let you all know we miss you, eternally" - 30.12.2020
> 
> I miss you, too x


End file.
